Hatred gets Adults Only rating, making console, Steam release unlikely

Third person spree-killing simulator Hatred has been given an Adults only (AO) rating from ESRB, the video game ratings board in the US and Canada. The rating was disclosed by one of the game’s developers on its official forum , which expressed surprise that the title did not get the more lenient Mature (M) rating, writing “Well, I’m not quite convinced why Hatred got AO rating while it lacks any sexual content, but it’s still some kind of achievement to have the second game in history getting AO rating for violence and harsh language only.” Hatred is in fact the third game to receive an AO rating for violence alone, with both Thrill Kill and Manhunt 2 also receiving that evaluation. Thrill Kill , however, had its release cancelled after Electronic Arts bought its publisher and objected to its content. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Hatred gets Adults Only rating, making console, Steam release unlikely

Man gets 10 years in prison after perpetrating website sales scam

A California man was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison after engaging in a years-long scheme to defraud people who responded to his ads selling domain names and websites that he claimed continually generated revenue. Federal prosecutors alleged that John Winston Boone scammed 18 people for approximately $1.3 million—providing false PayPal records to his victims to illustrate this profitability. Initially, Boone plead not guilty, but later changed his plea in late 2013. United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II, who was the same judge in a 2013 Los Angeles Prenda hearing , called the defendant’s conduct “cruel and callous.” Judge Wright also noted that Boone “showed a lack of humanity that was so base and so depraved.” Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Man gets 10 years in prison after perpetrating website sales scam

Red light camera vendor Redflex freaked out it may lose contracts

In a new Friday filing with the Australian Securities Exchange, Redflex, a prominent red light camera vendor, said that it could be facing an immediate net book value loss of $3.2 million if it permanently loses contracts in New Jersey and Ohio. In November 2014, the company told investors that the North American market is a “low/no-growth market.” Since 2009, the Garden State has operated a pilot program with Redflex cameras, but that program expired on December 16, 2014. The New Jersey Department of Transportation is now set to analyze its five years’ worth of data, write a report, and recommend whether to permanently halt the program or resurrect it. Meanwhile, in Ohio, even after the state’s Supreme Court upheld their use, Governor John Kasich signed into law in December 2014 a new bill that requires a police officer’s physical presence for tickets that are issued from traffic cameras. The law takes effect 90 days after the governor’s signature, and it could mean that cities will have less of a reason to maintain their camera systems. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Red light camera vendor Redflex freaked out it may lose contracts

Cable lobby says Google Fiber doesn’t need Title II to get pole access

The top cable lobby group says Google is blowing smoke when it comes to Title II and pole attachment rights. Google told the Federal Communications Commission that reclassifying broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act would help Google and other companies gain access to infrastructure controlled by utilities. Section 224 of Title II covers pole attachments, and Google urged the FCC to enforce this section if it does move broadband under Title II. But that isn’t even necessary, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA)  argued in a filing today , saying that “Google already can avail itself of pole attachment rights under Section 224, notwithstanding its assertions to the contrary. Google’s letter states that Google Fiber ‘lacks federal access rights pursuant to Section 224’ because it offers an ‘Internet Protocol video service that is not traditional cable TV.’ But as NCTA has explained on numerous occasions… the law is clear that facilities-based providers of Internet Protocol television (‘IPTV’) services do qualify as cable operators under the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (‘the Act’). The Act defines ‘cable operator’ as one who ‘provides cable service over a cable system,’ without any reference to the technology (IP-based, QAM-based, or otherwise) used to provide such service.” Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Cable lobby says Google Fiber doesn’t need Title II to get pole access

The 100 billion frames per second camera that can image light itself

High-speed cameras produce some of the most fascinating imagery in the world. They reveal hidden details and turn the everyday into the extraordinary. But these cameras, which generally top out at around 100,000 frames per second, have nothing on a camera reported last month in Nature . This beast can manage a massive 100 billion frames per second . If you want a high frame rate, you generally use stroboscopic imaging. In normal filming, the illumination is always on, and the camera shutter is operated as fast as possible. However, as the frame rate increases, the shutter time reduces and less light falls on the sensor. The result is a noisy image. In the embedded video, you can see the difference between normal filming and stroboscopic imaging. Stroboscopic imaging builds up an image by pulsing the light source while the camera shutter remains open. Using it, you can capture single images from an event that repeats periodically. The temporal resolution is now given by the duration and timing of the light pulse. Light pulses can be less than a femtosecond (10 -15 s) in duration, while timing can be controlled with femtosecond precision. This allows stop-motion photography with frame rates of trillions per second. Read 15 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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The 100 billion frames per second camera that can image light itself

Bitcoin investor who renounced US citizenship now can’t get back in

A well-known entrepreneur, often dubbed “Bitcoin Jesus”—who famously renounced his American citizenship last year—was denied a visa on Tuesday to re-enter the United States to attend an upcoming Bitcoin conference in Miami. According to Roger Ver’s tweets, it was his third attempt to re-enter in eight days. Ver, who on occasion wears a T-shirt that reads “borders are imaginary lines,” lambasted consular officials at the US Embassy in Barbados, where he made his application. @iamsunbird , The @USEmbassyBbdos staff specifically told me it was because I didn’t prove I have strong enough ties outside of the USA. — Roger Ver (@rogerkver) January 7, 2015 @tom_sharkey the most recent rejection was this morning. It was my third attempt in 8 days. They claim I secretly intend to live in the USA — Roger Ver (@rogerkver) January 6, 2015 In or out? Ver has been a citizen of the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis since February 2014. For the last 30 years, St. Kitts has offered citizenship through its “Citizenship by Investment” program. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Bitcoin investor who renounced US citizenship now can’t get back in

Only 25Mbps and up will qualify as broadband under new FCC definition

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler today is proposing to raise the definition of broadband from 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream to 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up. As part of the Annual Broadband Progress Report mandated by Congress , the Federal Communications Commission has to determine whether broadband “is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.” The FCC’s latest report, circulated by Wheeler in draft form to fellow commissioners, “finds that broadband is not being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion, especially in rural areas, on Tribal lands, and in US Territories,” according to a fact sheet the FCC provided to Ars. The FCC also gets to define what speeds qualify as broadband, or “advanced telecommunications capability,” as it’s called in policy documents. The FCC last updated that definition in 2010 , raising it from 200Kbps to the current 4/1 standard. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 said that advanced telecommunications capability must “enable users to originate and receive high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video telecommunications using any technology.” Wheeler’s proposed annual report says the 4/1 definition adopted in 2010 “is inadequate for evaluating whether broadband capable of supporting today’s high-quality voice, data, graphics, and video is being deployed to all Americans in a timely way.” (Despite the annual requirement, this would be the first such report since 2012 .) Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Only 25Mbps and up will qualify as broadband under new FCC definition

Former US cybersecurity official gets 25 years for child porn charges

On Monday, a federal judge in Nebraska sentenced the former acting director of cybersecurity for the US Department of Health and Human Services to 25 years in prison on child porn charges. Timothy DeFoggi, who was convicted back in August 2014, is the sixth person to be convicted in relations to a Nebraska-based child porn Tor-enable website known as PedoBook. That site’s administrator, Aaron McGrath, was sentenced to 20 years last year by the same judge. McGrath famously did not have an administrator password, a mistake that federal investigators were easily able to make use of. DeFoggi’s attorneys did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment, but he was almost certainly unmasked via an FBI-created malware exploit designed to expose him and other PedoBook users. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Former US cybersecurity official gets 25 years for child porn charges

Broadwell U arrives: Faster laptop CPUs and GPUs from Core i7 to Celeron

Intel promised us more chips based on the new Broadwell architecture in early 2015, and today it’s delivering on that promise. Today at CES in Las Vegas the company announced a total of 17 new dual-core processors across most of its consumer product lines—from Core i7 at the high end all the way down to Pentium and Celeron at the low end. Intel usually starts with high-end CPUs and rolls out low-end ones later, once demand for the high-end chips falls a bit and manufacturing costs have come down. Broadwell’s strange rollout means we’re getting mainstream and low-end mobile CPUs dropped on us all at once, but faster, more power-hungry quad-core chips destined for mobile and laptop workstations still aren’t available. Today we’ll walk you through all of the products Intel is announcing and what kind of performance and feature improvements you can expect. As CES rolls on, we’ll hopefully get a chance to go hands-on with some new Broadwell systems and provide some hands-on impressions. These systems should begin shipping to the public at some point in the next month or two. Read 27 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Broadwell U arrives: Faster laptop CPUs and GPUs from Core i7 to Celeron

North Korean defector to airdrop DVD, USB copies of The Interview

A well-known North Korean defector has announced that he will launch 100,000 DVDs and USB sticks with copies of The Interview as part of his regularly scheduled balloon launches into the Hermit Kingdom. Sony Pictures pulled the theatrical release of the film in the wake of hacks against its corporate networks . In an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, Park Sang-hak said that his next launch is planned for late January and will be in partnership with the Human Rights Foundation, which did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. “North Korea’s absolute leadership will crumble if the idolization of leader Kim breaks down,” Park told the AP, which noted that the dispatched versions will have Korean subtitles. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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North Korean defector to airdrop DVD, USB copies of The Interview